How a society deals with this tension may explain whether
cuteness appears in its art and literature.
Take medieval Europe as an example. Life there was
anything but dull. On the contrary, as the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga
writes: ‘Life was brimful of play: the joyous and unbuttoned play of the
people, full of pagan elements that had lost their sacred significance and been
transformed into jesting and buffoonery.’ Huizinga singles out ‘pagan elements’
because religion had transformed the social perception of play, if not people’s
tendency to engage in it.
However, play remained pagan because Christians saw it as
a frivolous distraction from God. Art was meant to express serious, religious
themes, which might explain why cuteness appears far less in the art of
medieval Europe than it did in Japan.
And yet Western artists did occasionally play around.
Monks who spent many hours copying manuscripts sometimes doodled in the margins
of the books they were working on. These marginalia include images of monsters
and animals acting like humans, but they tend to look grotesque and strange.
However, a few of them might be considered cute.
--- Joshua Paul Dale, Irresistible:
How Cuteness Wired
our Brains and Conquered the World. 2023.
